Social network services are used to build online communities of people who share common interests. Most social network services are Internet-based, and enable users to communicate using instant messaging, e-mail messages, web pages, web blogs, and other forms of communication. Examples of popular social network services today include FACEBOOK®, developed by Facebook, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., MYSPACE®, developed by MySpace, Inc. of Los Angeles, Calif., TWITTER®, developed by Twitter, Inc. of San Francisco, Calif., LINKEDIN®, developed by LinkedIn Corp. of Mountain View, Calif., NEXOPIA®, developed by Nexopia.com, Inc. of Edmonton, Alberta, and XING®, developed by Xing, AG of Hamburg, Germany.
Many social network services enable a user to publish his status, such as “available”, “off-line”, “busy” or “away”. However, only users who actively opt-in to be updated of a specific user's status are notified of the specific user's status updates.
It would thus be of advantage to enable users to send updates of their statuses to designated sets of friends, without requiring the friends to opt-in.